The accessibility settings worth knowing on every operating system

Six major operating systems keep their accessibility tools in a section with almost the same name, but the labels underneath drift apart. Here is what each platform calls the features you are most likely to need, and where the wording changes between versions.

One section, six different histories

Every mainstream operating system now gathers its accessibility tools in one place, and the name has converged on Accessibility. On iOS and iPadOS the section sits at the top level of Settings from iOS 13 onwards; on older releases it lived inside General, which still catches people following out-of-date instructions.

Windows 11 renamed the Windows 10 Ease of Access section to Accessibility, macOS moved its pane into the redesigned System Settings sidebar in Ventura, and the GNOME desktop that Ubuntu ships replaced the old Universal Access label with Accessibility. The features barely changed. The doors moved.

Screen readers and spoken feedback

Screen readers are the deepest feature in the list and each platform ships its own. iOS and macOS use VoiceOver, Android uses TalkBack, Windows uses Narrator, ChromeOS uses ChromeVox and Ubuntu uses Orca.

All of them can be switched on from the Accessibility section, and all of them have a keyboard or button shortcut that toggles them again. Learn the off switch before you turn one on, because the interface changes immediately. Reading iOS compared with Android makes the naming differences easier to keep straight.

Text size, bold text and zoom

Text size is the setting most people actually want. iOS offers Larger Text and Bold Text under Display and Text Size, Android exposes separate font size and display size controls, and Windows 11 has a system-wide text size slider that scales apps without touching the screen resolution.

macOS leans on display scaling and per-app text options rather than one global slider, while Ubuntu offers a large text switch alongside a cursor size control. ChromeOS pairs a font size setting with a full-screen magnifier, and the ChromeOS settings hub shows where those sit next to the display options.

Reduce motion, contrast and colour filters

Reduce Motion removes the zooming and sliding animations that trigger nausea for some people and simply waste time for everyone else. Apple uses that exact name, Windows 11 groups it under visual effects as animation effects, GNOME calls it reduce animation, and recent Android versions offer a remove animations toggle whose label depends on the manufacturer's skin.

Colour filters exist on all six systems, usually with presets for the common forms of colour vision deficiency. Contrast is a separate control, so if text is still hard to read after a filter, look for high contrast or contrast themes as well.

Captions, switch control and voice control

Caption settings do not create captions; they style them. You choose font, size and background for subtitles that apps render through the system, under a name like subtitles and captioning or caption preferences. Android's live caption is the exception, because it generates captions on the device for almost any audio.

Switch Control on Apple systems and Switch Access on Android let external buttons drive the whole interface, while voice control and voice access do the same with speech. Both are easy to enable by accident, so practise the exit route first.

Finding the right menu without a spare device

Because labels move between versions, the fastest way to help someone is to open the same menu they are looking at. The settings finder searches paths by name across systems, and the version change log records what was renamed between releases.

You can walk the real accessibility trees for iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, ChromeOS and Ubuntu in the osimulator settings simulator, then follow the language and region guide if a device is showing its menus in a language you cannot read.